The Director of Football

Hello all!

I thought I'd share a game style that i've been experimenting with, namely playing as a Director of Football, or Sporting Director or whichever term you prefer.

Now the idea behind this is that your assistant manager would handle all of the day to day footballing matters, including game days whereas you as the DoF would have a more overarching role.

The ground rules that i've laid out for myself are as follows:

1~During the pre season i will be signing players and staff, while the assistant will be in charge of friendlies and match preparation.

2~During the season i will holiday to the first of every month, and play for only that day if possible. So when i check in on the 1st of October for example, i'd check our results and performance over the month of September, have a meeting with my backroom staff, see what the scouts have found etc, and then holiday to November 1st where i'd repeat the process.

3~The month of January is the only month during the season that i'll go through in full, but on match days during this month i will take a 1 day holiday so as not to interfere with the assistant manager.

4~ When i holiday i dont set a formation or a line up for the assistant, these must be his responsibilities.

The assistant is in essence your manager and as such his hiring, and if need be firing, are your responsibility, so its imperative that you monitor the teams performance monthly so as to keep on top of whats going on with your club.

When it comes to picking an assistant the key info to look for is his playing formation and style as this will set the foundations for your recruitment of players.

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Lets look at my assistant at Juve, Mr Valter Di Salvo.

As you can see his preferred formation is a 4-4-2, his preferred style of pressing is closing down, he likes a balanced, passing style of play and he likes to use a zonal marking system.

Now what does this mean to you?

Well what it means is when you leave Mr Di Salvo to manage a game for you, he is going to use players in the following positions: GK,DR,DL,DC,DC,MR,ML,MC,MC,ST,ST.

So your responsibility as a DoF is to identify which players already at your club can be used in this system and which cant. The players that can't, you need to sell in order to bring in players that can play in your system.

When you look to bring in players you need to look beyond just their position, to see how they fit the ass man's style, so for instance at Juve i would need to bring in players who have good stamina and workrate as Di Salvo likes to close down a lot, i also need players who are comfortable passing the ball as he prefers a passing style.

Different assistants will have different styles that you need to cater to in order to bring success to your club. In another save, i was at Palermo and my ass man was Mr Roberto Rizzo.

As you can see Mr Rizzo is an adherent to the 4-3-3 formation so i would need to ensure that i have players who play in that formation and style

Let me know if you'd like to try this out, or indeed if anyone has already tried this out let me know how you're getting on.

Feel free to ask me any questions!

Great Idea, seems quite fun to be honest.

that is a good idea!! I'd be interested!

I had played FM11 during a 10 day holiday like this though I was only holidaying for the match days. So basically I was more involved than what you planned Also I setup the training schedules and the initial tactic at first season to ease the burden on the assistant and fit the play style to the team. Holidaying monthly also allows you a lot faster game, which can lead to great career games. The sweet spot is to find the right assistant manager though as he's pretty much in charge of everything and you are just shopping for him or talking to the board for facilities, affiliates etc...

Good luck to all who is going to try this as it's a bit different to not watch a single match live in game and just learn the outcome Lastly, as far as I can recall it was Walcott's Wonderkids(spelling?) who came up with something similar (or identical) to this a few years ago. At least I do remember that it was him that inspired me to try.

Sounds great. May do this in Fm13 for a game!

I had played FM11 during a 10 day holiday like this though I was only holidaying for the match days. So basically I was more involved than what you planned Also I setup the training schedules and the initial tactic at first season to ease the burden on the assistant and fit the play style to the team. Holidaying monthly also allows you a lot faster game, which can lead to great career games. The sweet spot is to find the right assistant manager though as he's pretty much in charge of everything and you are just shopping for him or talking to the board for facilities, affiliates etc...

One of the benefits of this game style is that it is a lot faster which as you mention leads to good career games. I used to keep quitting in the middle of saves and starting new ones due to boredom but with this I've found I can stick to a save longer and progress further than I normally would.

When it comes to picking your assistant, he is the main man so you need to get it right and constantly monitor little things like who plays regularly, how often he rotates, etc.

In one save i found that i had an assistant who rarely rotated, and so the majority of the players i bought for him were not being played and therefore in poor spirits and having a negative effect on the whole team, the next season i sold players in order to have a smaller squad, and we had a surprisingly successful season with only 19 players making an appearance all season!

Another thing i like about being a DoF is it forces you to be somewhat realistic in the way you sell players. For example in my Juve save, i tried to do what most people do and that is sell the likes of Iaquinta, Amauri, Pazienza, Grosso etc but was unable to so put them in the reserves until i could try to sell them again in January. What i found though, was that my assistant was using those player regularly in his team, with Iaquinta scoring 8 goals by January, so i left them and we won the title at seasons end and all of the above players had contributed to it, depsite me wanting to sell them!